


the last one left in line

by endquestionmark



Category: Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:06:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9404888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: 1The worst decision in the world does not involve kerosene, or ominously rusty machinery, or even the ill-advised pastime of teasing a grove full of hybridizedApis mellifera, more commonly known as the Africanized or “killer” honey bee. It involves a much more invasive species: the writer, which is far less easy to detect and almost impossible to eradicate once an infestation has been established. The worst decision in the world is not even a decision at all, but rather an error; it involves knowing a writer and letting it close enough to fall in love with one, because any other terrible fate will seem positively polite by comparison.





	

**Author's Note:**

> With insincere apologies to Vladimir Nabokov and Hysterical Literature.

1 The worst decision in the world does not involve kerosene, or ominously rusty machinery, or even the ill-advised pastime of teasing a grove full of hybridized _Apis mellifera_ , more commonly known as the Africanized or "killer" honey bee. It involves a much more invasive species: the writer, which is far less easy to detect and almost impossible to eradicate once an infestation has been established. The worst decision in the world is not even a decision at all, but rather an error; it involves knowing a writer and letting it close enough to fall in love with one, because any other terrible fate will seem positively polite by comparison. Killer bees have the good grace to die after stinging, which writers rarely do, and kerosene may be flammable, but writers are inflammatory, and often inflamed, and as the children’s rhyme goes, ominously rusty machinery can thread its way into your flesh and grind your bones to slivers but words will never hurt you. Words will keep you upright after a truly unmentionable number of stings, and carry you through the fire, and soothe you as the great flywheel ticks its way towards completing its terrible clockwork machinations. Words will outlast the queen and the hive and the last flickering embers and even, possibly, the rotational energy responsible for your automation, and a writer in love will make you immortal, without giving you any say in the matter. A writer in love will never tell a story that does not involve you ever again, and a writer in love will never let you have a moment’s rest, and a writer in love will never let you go: darling, dearest, dead and yet not departed, and I am sorrier for it every day, and yet find myself unable to do otherwise.

3 A word which here means "producing fever," and is encumbered4 with the synonyms "pyrogenic" and "inflammatory," all of which may be defined by the production of heat, and all of which may also be used to describe writers.

4 The word "encumbered" here means "burdened," as one may be while trying to escape from a burning building with the body of a loved one slung over one's shoulder. One may also find one's self encumbered by the production of heat, also known as pyrogenesis, which necessitates the expenditure of energy of another sort, and this can be seen most clearly in the feverish face of a loved one, growing weaker and brighter by the moment. It is no coincidence that the encumbrance in both of these cases is elective. Such voluntary fervent devotion can move even the most ink-stained of hearts to a febrile blush.

8 He was incorrect. The best pursuit on a grey afternoon is one that involves a book, and can only be improved by increasing the quantity of books, and perhaps the judicious addition of a cup of tea. Books offer a more reliable means of escape than almost any other device short of a conveniently-located trapdoor, or possibly a concealed staircase, and therefore I have found it prudent to pursue the avoidance of pursuit in libraries, which boast both a great quantity of books and a great number of quick exits should the former prove insufficient. Libraries often take on the aspect of a liminal space. "Liminal" is a word which here means "fixed,” instead of its usual definition, which is “transitional” or “relating to a threshold.” This definition is oxymoronic, a word which here means "self-contradictory," but then so many things that seem obvious are on closer examination; for example the way that good company can make even the greyest day seem bright, or for example the way that a bitter cup of tea can be sweeter than a spoonful of sugar, or for example the way that a library, for all its conveniently-located trapdoors and concealed staircases, can entrap not only one's heart but one's entire soul, one's entire being, and all the words that one will ever be able to write again.

11 I once found myself under a similar false impression. Just as one might assume that the sun will rise in the morning, or that the tide may be predicted according to a set of generally accepted calculations and tables, or that certain varieties of fungus will wax and wane according to their own viciously fickle disposition, it occasionally seems safe to make similar assumptions based on established patterns and one’s own observations of human nature. For example, if somebody is entering an unfamiliar dark room where the element of surprise would likely be advantageous, it is safe to assume they will almost certainly ask if anybody is there. If somebody is supposed to stay awake in order to watch for a signal reflected from a watchtower two counties away, it is safe to assume they will fall asleep at precisely the crucial moment. And if somebody is ill and the weather is inclement, it is safe to assume that a cup of tea and a good book in a well-stocked library with a roaring fire is the most prudent course of action. It is safe to assume that rest and restoration are in order, rather than any exertion which might exacerbate one’s condition, and one would think it safe to assume that recitation — another aspect in an account in accordance with alliteration, a word which here means “the repetition of words beginning with the same letter” — would be an unwelcome prospect. Most people find oratory a chore to be endured at the best of times, and not to be endured at the worst, but you, my dear, were never most people, or even many of them, and now you are none of them at all.

17 Most libraries, however well-appointed, are not built for the comfort of their inhabitants or even their visitors, except in the rare occasion that the visitor in question is xylophagous, a word which here means “having a diet which consists primarily or solely of wood.” A wayward _Xestobium rufovillosum_ , for example, would find itself perfectly at home in any library, no matter how drafty or poorly lit or badly organized it (the library, not the _Xestobium rufovillosum_ ) might be.

19 This was a malapropism, or misuse of words, on her part, as everybody else knew and was too polite to mention. Rather than “haberdasher,” the correct word to use would have been “harbinger.” A harbinger is an omen, otherwise known as a portent, a precursor, an omen, or an augury. For example, a red sky in the evening is said to herald a clear day to come, whereas a red sky in the morning is said to herald rain and can safely be taken as an indication that one should build up the fire, close the shutters, and settle in until the storm has passed. Seeing a shooting star is said to be a sign of good luck and an occasion to make a wish, rather than an occasion to reflect silently on whatever fragment of space detritus has just made its final fiery reentry into the atmosphere and burned to ash in the process, a vastly futile denouement whose unfortunate similarities to your own fate — a brief flare of light in the darkness, long since faded — mean that I can no longer seek comfort in the silent stars of the night sky without weeping. And the ticking of the _Xestobium rufovillosum_ , more commonly known as the deathwatch beetle, needs no further explanation; they share your fondness for libraries and your voracious appetite for knowledge, and they — as you once did in happier, more overcast, and less flammable days — help me keep time as I pass my lonely hours endlessly retracing your ink-stained steps.

23 You never did like to close the shutters on a storm.

31 Many people find themselves with regrets after the fact, a phrase which here means "when it is too late to matter." I am no exception, but a comprehensive list of my regrets would make for a long and depressing manuscript which would need to be broken up into multiple volumes and interrupted with slightly less tragic interludes from an apparently unrelated story for the reader's sake.

32 You, on the other hand, seemed constitutionally — a word here which means "intrinsically," "inherently," "inseparably" — incapable of regret, and thus it was not conscience which consumed you at the last, but rather fire.

33 A word which here means "vanished."

38 A word which here means "forever."

43 A word which here means "doing one's best in exceptionally bleak circumstances."

47 This would, in fact, have been presumptuous of him.

55 In fact, people often make foolish decisions against their better interests, even when there is a better option available. For example, if I was seeking to impress a new acquaintance, I might challenge her to whistle the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 756 in A major with a mouth full of crackers, and find myself soundly defeated by a combination of her esoteric ability and my own unfounded arrogance. If I was seeking to arrange another encounter at some point in the future, I might leave my keys on the sideboard so that I could return to retrieve them after the other guests had departed, and then I might find the door locked and the lights turned out and need to take matters into my own hands, as the saying goes, or rather into my own makeshift grappling hook and set of lockpicks, as a more accurate proverb might run. If I was interrupted in that rather thankless and incongruous undertaking and was seeking to escape further embarrassment, I might tell the truth and therefore achieve my original aim entirely by accident. And if, years later, the window seat in a well-appointed but otherwise unremarkable library was occupied by the same former acquaintance as she recovered from a brief and unpleasant bout of fever, and if I now considered her an associate, accomplice, and ally, then I might sit on the floor instead, and rest my head against the sill next to her knee, to be close to her without disturbing her repose, which now, my dear, will remain unbroken forever, no matter how much I wish I could distract you one last time.

56 This was not your specialty, but I was moved to applause nevertheless, and was barely able to restrain myself from a standing ovation.

59 The phrase “cloak-and-dagger” rarely involves a literal cloak, and involves a literal dagger with only slightly greater frequency. Like many idioms, it is meant to be taken with a grain of salt, which is to say metaphorically rather than literally. For example, if two people are cut from the same cloth, it does not mean that they are fashioned from the same woven material but rather that, whatever souls are made of, they share in it. If somebody is keeping something under their hat, it does not necessarily mean that they are engaging in a cerebral form of sleight, except for the ways in which it means precisely that. And two people who work hand in glove with each other rarely do precisely that, except in the cases where one of the individuals wishes to leave no fingerprints, and the other is less concerned with such matters of discretion. On that grey day, I attended you with hat in hand, an idiom which here means “with humility and consideration for the unbroken quiet in the library and your recently broken fever.” You were dressed to the nines, a phrase which here does not mean “elaborately and according to the style of evening attire” but rather “to best advantage,” and that phrase here means “very well, for somebody who viewed bedrest as an inconvenience rather than an indulgence.” It also means “in a way that I could neither quantify nor describe otherwise, but could not forget in a thousand years if I tried.” I have not, of course, tried, and can therefore recall without a moment’s hesitation that your gown was the color of nimbostratus clouds, and its hem was as heavy and soft against my knuckles as my affection for its wearer, and like the sodden sky outside it seemed to make no promises that it would not keep.

62 Declamation, or recitation, as it is often known, is not the same as defamation. Defamation is the communication of a falsehood that harms the individual of another — for example, if somebody were to say “Lemony Snicket is dead, and good riddance,” that might be considered defamation — while declamation is a skill named first by the Romans, who were so fond of organizing things that they came up with words in order to organize the sorts of arguments one might have. Nobody in this story is a Roman, or particularly skilled in the rhetorical genres established in Roman elite culture, but the situation might have benefited from some relevant declamation: “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, for instance, or Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” or the lesser-known classic “Help! Help! I am Being Pursued by a Most Persistent Scoundrel whose Villainous Fraud Defies Explanation,” a poem which I first heard at an evening of comic recitations and humorous dialogues read by a young woman with a mouthful of shortbread and an impish glint in her eye.

67 In fact, he was both short of breath and short of breadth, particularly of character. This deficiency might have been corrected with a well-placed recitation, but alas, it was not to be.

70 The right words in the right place can shift the world just a little, as Archimedes never said. According to a story which is apocryphal, a word which here means “may or may not be authentic but is often nevertheless repeated as if true,” Archimedes — a mathematician, physicist, and inventor — once proclaimed that, given a long enough lever and a firm place to stand, he could move the Earth. I am no mathematician, no physicist, and no inventor, and I am equipped not with a lever but with a rather leaky pen with which I absconded from an otherwise unremarkable bank which later burned down under mysterious circumstances. As such, I spend my days rearranging words like pieces of a puzzle or letters in a cryptogram, and wiping ink from my fingers, in order to find an order which might make a difference. The last time I heard a phrase that had any sort of positive meaning, it was along the lines of “No, sir, smoke inhalation is much quicker and kinder than burning to death,” and that was understandably somewhat wanting in the department of comfort.

73 The word “particular” here means “picky,” but without the negative connotations of a child unwilling to eat its vegetables. You, for instance, were particular about declamation, even the ill-advised recitations you inexplicably enjoyed performing while ill. Just as one might seek a particular kind of solace in the telling and retelling of a sorrowful account, you sought a particular sort of poem, and left the others so much rubble by the wayside, for me to pick my brokenhearted way through in search of clues after it was far too late. One book after another you discarded like broken matches, in a growing pile that threatened first to dwarf and later to engulf me where I sat. “I was the shadow of the—” you began, and then broke off. “Oh, how dull. Turning and turning in the widening — oh, no, what would Shelley think. All those ruined statues, like — do you remember?” (I did.) “When you told me—” (I did.) “And we—” (Did, yes.) “So those are out of the question,” you said decisively. “How about—”

76 Sometimes the only way to move forwards is to first go backwards.

79 He did not mean “metaphorical” but rather “metaphysical,” which here means “using inventive conceits to address the reader directly or presume a level of awareness on the audience’s part which is not otherwise implied by the medium itself.” Metaphysical poetry, for example, emphasizes extended metaphors involving complex logic; notable poets of the metaphysical movement, should you wish to seek out their work for your own subtextual purposes, include John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell.

82 “Marvelous,” you said. “Shall we?”

84 Steadfastness is an admirable quality, even more so in the face of interference. The hem of your gown hung as heavy and soft as the quality of your recitation, and was just as agreeably moving and movable (a word which here does not mean “furniture”), but you barely hesitated between iambs, and your pronunciation never faltered.

85 One of Andrew Marvell’s finest and most widely known poems is “To His Coy Mistress,” a work which also serves as a foremost example of the carpe diem genre. Carpe diem is a Latin phrase which means “seize the day,” and as we had no shortage of uninterrupted leisure — all the time in the world, you used to say, most often with a wry smile when we had no time at all — we did.

87 “And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity,” you said, and drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, really, what would Shelley think? Oh—”

88 “I imagine Mary would approve enough for both of them,” I said, looking up. “Please, don’t stop on my account.”

89 You didn’t.

91 “The grave’s a fine and private place,” you read, and began to laugh, a rising scale of both pitch and pleasurable paroxysm. I waited, moderating my activities only slightly, until your laughter subsided, though your smile remained. “But none, I think, do there embrace,” you continued, and closed the book, flushed and fulfilled. “I don’t think Marvell really compares, do you?”

92 He never could.

94 A word which here means “bereft.”

97 Memories often become associated with places or purlieus, a word which here encompasses the liminal space, the boundary, and the outlying regions of a particular location; I used to dread rainy days, because of the memories they inevitably recalled, until I remembered how you loved the sunshine, and that too was dimmed for me forever. I used to dread libraries, until I remembered how you loved the seaside, and I dreaded that next until I remembered how you despised the suburbs, and I dreaded those until I remembered that there was no place in the world where your shadow had not fallen, and then I knew that we had never been in possession of enough time, let alone the world’s entire supply, and that I would spend the rest of my days in the penumbra of your perishment.

100 It is easier, in the daylight, to avoid the edges of the emptiness that results from losing somebody very dear to one. At night, just as it is all too easy to stub one’s toe on a piece of furniture one could swear had been elsewhere during the daytime, it is all too easy to stumble around the boundaries of one’s loss, to trip over it as one might trip over a poorly laid rug or a trapdoor left slightly ajar, and find one’s self unable to avoid the fact of such sorrow any longer. I myself have lived so long with the same grief that it may as well be familiar furniture in the bleak house that I visit whenever I have nothing else to occupy my thoughts, and often wonder whether it is preferable to stub one’s toe on a regular basis or become so accustomed to the shadowy forms outlined in the dark that they become almost a comfort, but you face no such quandaries. Death closes all, and contrary to poetic license there is in fact no amount of striving or seeking that will ever make the slightest difference to that, no strength of will, no heroism of heart that will bring you back, or failing that take me to wherever you have gone: my light, my love, my lost.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 [Hybridized _Apis mellifera_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee)  
>  19 [_Xestobium rufovillosum_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathwatch_beetle)  
>  55 [Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHREyE5GzQ)  
> 56 [Mozart's Symphony No. 14 in A major](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv0k9gx_FKI)  
> 59 [Nimbostratus cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbostratus_cloud)  
> 62 ["Funeral Blues"](https://allpoetry.com/Funeral-Blues) by W. H. Auden; ["The Waste Land"](http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html) by T. S. Eliot; “Help! Help! I am Being Pursued by a Most Persistent Scoundrel whose Villainous Fraud Defies Explanation" lost in the Baudelaire estate fire  
> 73 ["Ozymandias"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ozymandias) by Percy Bysshe Shelley  
> 79 [Metaphysical poetry](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-metaphysical-poets)  
> 85 ["To His Coy Mistress"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44688) by Andrew Marvell


End file.
